Sunday, April 10, 2011

Face Book is most popular social networking of the current times and there is no doubt about it. You can find any body on Face Book from your granny to your nephew :) , you can find your childhood friends, meet friends online, meet new friends, see their photos chat and share things with them. If we say that Internet has shrunk the world and brought people closer than Face book will have the most part it it.

So for the Face Book lovers here are some most popular smiley codes to use in Face Book chat.
Face Book
If you want to use bold fonts in Face Book Chat then type your message between two asteriks.
e.g . *xxxxx*
If you want an underlined message then type your message between two underscores.
e.g. _xxxxxxx_

Hope my article will add much fun to your Face Book chat. If you like my article please do comment..
Keyboard shortcuts reduce a lot time during work. It doesn’t matters whether you are using windows, Linux, Microsoft office or any other program. All the computer programs have keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are useful in some big works, instead of moving your mouse pressing the click button instead you just have to press two or more keys, both at same time and Waa…. Lah your work is done. I am used to basic and some advance keyboard shortcuts of most of the office programs therefore I complete my work much faster than a person working with a mouse. I am posting some basic keyboard shortcuts for windows which every person should know.

Basic Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows

Windows key + E = Explorer
Windows key + Break = System properties
Windows key + F = Search
Windows key + D = Hide/Display all windows
ALT + Tab = Switch between windows
ALT, Space, X = Maximize window
CTRL + Shift + Esc = Task Manager
CTRL + C = Copy
CTRL + X = Cut
CTRL + V = Paste
CTRL + Z   = Undo an action
CTRL + Y  = Redo an action
CTRL + A  =Select all items in a document or window
F1 = Display Help
F2 = Rename the selected item
F3 = Search for a file or folder
F4 = Display the Address bar list in Windows Explorer
F5 = Refresh the active window
F6 = Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop
F10 = Activate the menu bar in the active program.

Do let me know if my post helped you out or not by commenting back..
Now a days many internet users have started using Wi-Fi internet connections as it is suitable for fastest possible internet connectivity any where. Wi-Fi connections are connected through a wireless network. If you a Wi-Fi device and you have an access to a Wi-Fi ISP or Wireless internet router then you can start using your internet with a single mouse click. But wireless network is much unsecured than a wired network. Any intruder who knows the access of certain wireless network can hack in and play games. He can consume your bandwidth, or can generate rumor or terrorist attack mails from your Wi-Fi connection. No body needs trouble, so here are some tips to increase your Wi-Fi Security from hack attacks or intruders.

Tips to Increase Your Wi-fi SecurityWifi security

  • Enable firewall on each computer or router: Wireless routers have built-in Firewall, make sure it is turned on, cause there are options to disable it too.
  • Turn off your Wireless Router when not in use: When you are not using your wireless connection then turn off your wireless router, don’t be lazy you can turn it on again with just a press of a button.
  • Change the Default User Name and Passwords: Most of the wireless routers come with “Admin” as the user name and same as the password. Through this one can access and change the settings of your wireless router easily. So, donot use default user name and passwords.
  • Enable Mac Addressing: There is filtering option in wireless routers configuration where you can give access to your defined mac address, it easily makes wireless connection safe from intruders.
I hope my article will help you guys. If you like my post donot forget to comment back to encourage me.....

If you have a computer which you share amongst your family members than many of us are always trying to hide something, making something personal or which no body can have a look at but at the same we can have the access to it easily. People like me are mostly trying to hide photos and documents of their girl friends or girl friends :D . There are different ways to secure or personalize your documents and photos from other.

Hide Folder in XP (method I)

1. You can create different User accounts on windows with your User account having a password and also selecting the make documents private option.

Hide Folder in XP (method II)

2. Making an invisible folder also solves the problem. For that goto the location and create a new folder by right clicking on the window area of explorer and select new folder. Name the folder as, Keep ALT pressed on the keyboard and while ALT is pressed input 0160 and release ALT. This will create a blank ASCII character. Now here comes, how to make the folder invisible. Right click the folder and select properties. Click on the customize tab  and then click on Change Icon. Select the blank icon available in shell32.dll looking at the image below.
hide folderhide folder
Now click on OK. Now your folder is visible and neither its name. If you want to access your folder just Press CTRL + A (Select All) you’ll see a blank selection rename the folder and you are done.
It seems that Windows XP reserves 20% of the available bandwidth (i.e. 20% of your Internet available speed) to itself and that is one of the reasons that you will never reach your full download speed under this operating system. In this short tutorial we will teach you how to fix this and improve your Internet speed. Please notice that this tip only works on Windows XP Professional. Also some people claim that this trick is pure myth. So I leave it here for you guys to test and see if it really increases your Internet performance or not.
In order to fix this just follow these easy steps:

1. Click on Start, Run, gpedit.msc, .
2. On the window that will show up, click on Administrative Templates, Network, QoS Packet Scheduler.

optimize internet speed
3. On the right side pane, double click Limit reservable bandwidth. Change this configuration from “not configured” to “Enabled” and the reduce Bandwidth limit (%) from 20% to zero.
4. Click on Ok and restart your computer.
It seems that Windows XP reserves 20% of the available bandwidth even if this option is not configured and even if you don’t use QoS (Quality of Service) feature (which is disabled by default).
Keep in mind that there are several other reasons for your download speed not reaching the labeled speed of your Internet connection such as:
* The labeled speed of your Internet connection is its maximum speed, not meaning that you will be able to always get that download speed. Your broadband operator only guarantees this speed between your home (or office) and their network.
* High traffic on your service provider network.
* High traffic on the server you are downloading a file.
* Speed limit on the server you are downloading a file (e.g. if the server has its download speed limited to 2 Mbps you won’t be able to reach a higher speed than that).
* Route from your home or office to the server where the file is located.
* Your Internet connection being shared with other computers at your home or office.
* Downloading several files at the same time with P2P programs, eating up part of the available bandwidth of your Internet connection.
optimize internet speed



In these days everyone wants to make money online. There are many ways to make some dollars from Internet. All you need some knowledge about internet & you can start making money from Internet. In starting you don't need to invest money on domain & hosting. You can start from a blog which you can create free. Bring traffic to your blog. Here are some ways from which you can make money from internet after creating a free blog.

1. You can join Google Adsense & display ads related to your blog content.
2. You can sell text links ads on your site.
3. Join affiliate programmes.
4. Join Pay Per Click programmes.

Hope it helps you....
To utilize the sync feature, make sure that all of your computers have Firefox 4 installed. If your Firefox is still the older version, you need to download the latest version first.

After Firefox 4 is installed, open it up and go to the “Set Up Sync” menu. In the Mac version, this menu is located under “Tools“; while in the Windows version, it’s under the “Firefox” menu.

You can choose one of the computers to start setting up your Firefox Sync account and add the other computers to the account later. Click the “Create a New Account” button in the “Firefox Sync Setup” window.

Continue by filling in your email address and chosen password in the Account Details.
You will get the “Sync Key”. You will use the key to set up and add another computer to the sync account. Due to its importance, it’s advisable to save the key and keep it safe.


The key will be saved as an HTML file. If you have a Dropbox account and have the application installed on the other computers that you use, it’s a good idea to save the Firefox Sync Key file in the Dropbox folder so you can access it easily.

Now the set up process is complete. Click the “Done” button to wrap up.



Adding Other Firefoxes To The System

The next step is to add other Firefoxes in other computers to your account.
Go to the “Set Up Sync” menu on the other Firefox and start the setup process again.

But now click the “Connect” button instead of “Create A New Account“.

You will see “Add a Device” window and you will have three sets of codes. Leave this window open for a while and go back to the first computer where you set up the Firefox Sync account.


In the first computer, open “Preferences” and choose the “Sync” tab. Click the “Add a Device” link and write down the three codes that you got in the previous step.


It’s possible that you may not have the first computer with you when you add another computer to your sync account. In this case, click the “I don’t have the device with me” link under the three sets of codes. This other option requires you to sign in with your Sync account. Type in your email address and password. Open the saved Firefox Sync Key HTML file and type in the Sync Key.


And that’s it. You’ve just added another computer to your sync account. Repeat the process for other computers that you use and you are ready to sync your bookmarks across computers.




Actions such as checking into places, clicking “Like” on a page, application interactions and posting on Facebook pages can be then used as marketing ammo, sending targeted recommendations to your friends featuring your name and profile picture. Users who are featured in the adverts won’t be paid a penny.


This new way for advertisers to target their audience on a startlingly personal level quietly launched in January, and (in a move that’s angered many) each Facebook user’s account, by default, allows this to happen. Despite many voicing their concerns, Facebook insists that this new breed of social advertising falls in line with its current privacy policy.


For those of you seething in your office chairs, there’s a simple way to disallow Facebook from using your personal data in these new ‘sponsored stories’ from yourAccount Settings:


Whilst logged into Facebook, click Account then Account Settings. On the far right of the row of tabs choose Facebook Adverts, which will take you to a page where you can change Allow adverts on platform pages to show my information to and Show my social actions in Facebook Adverts to No one.


What do you think about Facebook’s new adverts? Have you changed your account settings? Spread the word and have your say in the comments below.

 
 
Let’s assume for a moment that you threw caution to the wind and have already reformatted the hard drive of your computer. Then, you suddenly realize that no backups are available.


What course of action can you take to save yourself and your entire saved data on your computer from completely drowning due to the split-second mistake? There’s still a few lifebuoys out there. Read on to find out.  

First: Do not write to the drive!

The first absolute rule you need to know is – do not write to the hard drive if you are planning on recovering data off it. When you write to a hard drive the system drivers randomly write data to the disk. So, when you write to a drive there is a good chance you are overwriting any data on it that you could have possibly restored.


This means do not try to boot from the drive, or if it is an external USB drive do not store any new files on it. Next, you can start thinking of recovery by picking one of the below mentioned options. 
 
Pick Your Recovery OS

Once you install the hard drive in a system and boot to an operating system such as Windows or Mac it will automatically try to access data on the drive. If you have already created a new partition on the drive, this means that it could be writing to the drive without you even knowing about it.
The best solution is to boot using a recovery disk that runs its own OS. This will leave all of the drives on your computer alone until the recovery process is started.


If you are uncomfortable running one of the custom tools, then some of the software listed below can still run right on top of your operating system, and it will still work to scan a reformatted hard drive to recover files
Best Free Recovery Tools

Paragon Rescue Kit

The best utility for restoring deleted files from a formatted hard drive is Paragon’s Rescue Kit. There is a free version and a paid version. For basic tasks, the free version will do.
First you will need to register for a serial number on the site, and download the installer. The installer can either save an ISO file or burn a boot CD directly.
After you boot your system into the Rescue Kit, it will ask you which function you wish to perform. 
 

Select File Transfer Wizard if you want to transfer deleted files off of the drive. This will then open a menu that lets you browse the disk for deleted and non-deleted files and add them to a clipboard. Click Next and then specify where you would like to save them to.


Select Boot Corrector if you are just having problems booting from your hard drive. It will then try a few things to correct the Master Boot Record and booting process on the drive.


Finally select Undelete Partition if you accidentally deleted a whole partition, but haven’t overwritten it yet with a new one.  



You can search any partition-free space on your hard drive for deleted partitions.


Paragon Rescue Kit is a must-have tool for anyone dealing with PC tech support and can be a real life (and data) saver.  

 If you are already booted in Windows, or if you have a flash drive that needs to have some files restored from it, check out Recuva. It has been reviewed on MakeUseOf before, and is still in active development and a great choice if you are wanting to restore specific files that have been deleted.



Parted Magic is a great tool in general, and it does include a few tools for helping to restore a deleted partition. First, if you want to make a mirror of the drive for data recovery purposes, you can certainly do that as it is a part of Parted Magic’s bread and butter functions.


If your computer was running Ubuntu before formatting, it also includes a program called Extundelete. This works to restore deleted ext3 and ext4 files ystems, which Ubuntu uses by default. 


For years, I’ve been looking for a high-quality free voice to text software solution that will automatically take an audio recording and transcribe it to text. Such an application will put a lot of transcription companies out of work, but it’s a dream that I believe will come true some day. Recently, I conducted another hour-long interview and in my search for such applications,

Dock & Speech Recognition to Transcribe Your Voice

Obviously, the first thing I wanted to do with Express Scribe (Windows/Mac) is to stream an audio file to automatically transcribe the interview. This is my pipe dream, so I had to try. Although the odds were good it wouldn’t work, because the computer would only be able to learn my voice. Either way, the first step is to enable the built-in voice recognition service in Windows 7 and train it to understand your voice.
Go into the Control Panel, click on “Ease of Access“, and then select “Speech Recognition.” 



First select “Start Speech Recognition“, and this will enable the feature as part of your Windows experience. I very highly recommend that you click on “train your computer to better understand you” and go through the training sequence at least twice – it only takes about 5 to 7 minutes at a time. Speak as plainly and articulately as possible. 


 To enable speech recognition in Express Scribe, just click on Options and select the “Speech to Text” tab. You’ll see the default profile show up in the dropdown box. This is the profile that you’ve just trained to recognize your speech pattern. Click on “Add” so the profile shows up in the list.

Now that it’s ready to transcribe, the first thing I wanted to try was bringing in voice audio files and seeing how well the software transcribed them. You do this by clicking on “Dock” and then choosing the Audio File Transfer Method


 Using this selection, you then choose a folder where your external recording device, like a digital recorder, downloads files to your computer. This will import all of those files to Express Scribe. I used this feature to import audio files from my interview folder. Here’s what the transcription looked like.

As you can see, the transcription was pretty much garbage. Nine times out of ten the transcription can’t even get started, and when it does it will write a few words and then completely bomb out. Obviously, the automatic transcription of audio files that I dream about still hasn’t come true, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on Express Scribe. There’s still the fact that it is trained to recognize and transcribe my voice. So I could still make use of the software to transcribe my own voice recordings and dictations.


To do this live (with your microphone), all you have to do is plug in your microphone and then click “Dock” and choose the Audio Cable option. The following screen will appear, showing the audio level of your microphone and that it’s actively streaming in the live audio. Go ahead and start dictating. 


 Of course, if you’ve recorded your dictation on a digital voice recorder, all you have to do is hook up your voice recorder output to the microphone input of your computer, and this feature will stream in the audio (that’s actually what it’s intended for – docking your recorder).


When I was finished dictating a long sentence, I clicked “done” to see how well the software performed. As you can see below – pretty stellar. Only one word wrong (and should have been “can”), but that was because I stumbled when I spoke.


This is pretty impressive, and I can see using Express Scribe to transcribe a whole lot of recordings that I make while I’m mobile – it’ll save a whole lot of time in transcribing my audio, because I’ll only have to go back and edit any small mistakes.



The accurate transcription from audio to text is not an easy feature to find in most free voice to text software, so it was surprising to see Express Scribe do such a good job. Another nice feature is the “Incoming” feature within the Options menu. Here, you can configure a certain recording directly on your hard drive for automatic syncing. 





 
With piracy a constant concern for computer software companies, methods of registering and validating software are now the norm. Operating systems are no different. Microsoft Windows has long used a product key that validates the operating system.


The complexity of the validation used, however, has increased over time. Today, Microsoft has online activation servers that must validate your installation key, and your installation key is often tied to your computer. Installing a copy of Windows with the same key on a different computer can cause issues, but it’s possible to get around them.  
 
Understanding Different Versions of Windows


 The conditions under which you might need to hassle with Windows activation vary depending on the version of Windows that you own. Microsoft sells its operating systems with different licenses attached, and those licenses impact how validation works when you try to remove Windows activation from one computer and install it on another.


If you go to the store and buy a copy of Microsoft Windows you’re likely buying a standard retail license. A retail license lets you install Windows on one computer. If you try to install it twice, Windows activation can tell (so long the computers have a connection to the Internet) and will call foul.

However, it’s likely you instead have an OEM copy of Windows. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer, and this label is slapped onto software that comes pre-installed or packaged with a computer. OEM copies of Windows come with a license that only allows Windows to be installed on the machine the manufacturer shipped. You can’t take the OEM copy and install it on any other computer – if you try, Windows activation will notice.


Finally, you may end up with a volume license which makes it possible to install Windows on multiple machines at once. The Windows 7 family pack is a good example of this; the activation keys that come with the family pack can be used on three computers simultaneously. 


Removing Windows Activation

Unfortunately, there is no Microsoft tool that lets you remove your Windows activation from a computer once you have installed the operating system. This is not surprising when you think about it; if you could simply remove your activation, there would be no point to the OEM license. There are cracks, of course, but these are not difficult for Microsoft to counter over time by releasing new updates. If you want your copy of Windows 7 to work reliably you need to legitimately install Windows with an activation key. 

o What Do I Do?






Pick up the phone!
Oddly, Microsoft is not strict about making sure you obey the terms of their software license. They are often happy to help you activate a copy of Windows on a new or upgraded computer even if you have an OEM license. They just want to talk to you about it in person.


The process is simple. Install Windows on a computer and insert the activation key as normal. When Windows starts and you connect to the Internet you will receive an error message letting you know that your copy of Windows is not genuine. Click on the text link that lets you solve the problem online and try to activate the key again. When it fails once more, you are given the chance to call into Microsoft support. 


Do this. You will end up speaking to a representative who will ask you the circumstances of your installation. While these representatives are likely to let you activate even if you’re blatantly moving an OEM license, a simple white lie can help smooth the gears. Just let them know that you’ve upgraded your computer, causing the activation to flag. They’ll press a few buttons on their end and presto! You’ve just activated your Windows key on a different computer, and since it’s 100% legit, you don’t need to worry about a new Windows update messing with your PC. 


This is effectively a method of removing your Windows activation from the computer that your copy of Windows was originally installed on, because the key will no longer work on the original PC. If you do boot up the original PC and allow it to connect to the Internet you will soon be hit with an error message letting you know your copy of Windows is no longer genuine. Which is correct, because your activation has been transferred.


To be absolutely clear; this DOES NOT duplicate your Windows activation.
Also, be warned that Microsoft does keep track of how your activation key is used. They will take notice if you’re calling into their hotline once a week to transfer an activation key. Microsoft could be more strict about this process than they currently are. Don’t give Redmond a reason to change its policy.